LA coroner: Japanese businessman's death a suicide

SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER, The Associated Press

An autopsy has determined the death of a Japanese businessman found dead in a jail cell after being extradited to California in a decades-old murder conspiracy case was a suicide, the coroner's office said Wednesday.

His lawyer Mark Geragos hired an independent pathologist to examine the body, then said injuries found on Miura were consistent with murder.

Police said Miura hanged himself with a piece of his shirt less than 24 hours after he was returned to the United States to stand trial for conspiring to murder his wife 27 years ago.

The Miura case was a sensation in Japan, where it was known as "the Japanese O.J. case."

Geragos said pathologist David Posey found deep tissue injuries on Miura's back that indicated a beating. He also said a hematoma on Miura's larynx could have come from forced choking, and that Posey concluded the injury could not have been caused by self-inflicted hanging.

Autopsy results, however, indicated the cause of death was hanging, with no anatomical evidence of other fatal trauma.

Geragos said he was "appalled" the coroners would release the autopsy report when they refused his requests to re-examine Miura's body in light of Posey's findings.

"They said once they release a body, they don't re-examine it," Geragos said. "It's unbelievable to me they would come out with these findings after they ignored our requests."

The case began Nov. 18, 1981, when Miura and his wife Kazumi were shot in a downtown Los Angeles parking garage. Miura was shot in the leg and recovered, but his wife was shot in the head and died after lingering in a coma for a year.

Miura was convicted in 1994 in Japan of plotting his wife's death and was sentenced to life in prison, but that country's high court reversed the verdict and acquitted Miura in 2003.

Los Angeles County charged Miura with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 1988. He was arrested in February during a trip to Saipan and extradited to the United States.